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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

An Open Letter to le Parti Québécois a.k.a The Muggle-born Regulation Commission of Quebec

(Disclaimer: If you find this offensive, find a sense of humor. It's a joke.)

Dear Minister,

I have been reading up heavily on your proposed Bill 14, an amendment to Bill 101, as well as all the other endeavors of your party and I want to openly express my concerns. Yes, I was raised by my Muggle mother in Texas, which alone likely makes me the last expert on the matter, but I am still a proud citizen of your jurisdiction by birth and by blood. In fact you probably recognize and accept my surname, Lefebvre, an old Pureblood family in Quebec.

I see your concern over the preservation of your ways and culture and the use of your OQLF to enforce your Pureblood regulations on the businesses and people of Quebec. You've used your power to cancel Muggle-intensive classes for Quebec students and seek approval for your bill, which will allow the Ministry to revoke Muggle-Pureblood towns and cities' dual-blood status if their Muggle population falls below 50%.

You even got a local Montreal restaurant in trouble for not having the word "pasta" properly translated for Purebloods. It confuses me, Minister, that you seem to think Purebloods cannot read the word "pasta" and know what it means. It's not even a Muggle word and Muggles know it. It's a popular dish that is universally known. Kraft Dinner is pasta, Minister. Do young Purebloods need that clarified as well? If so, I'll see that every Half-blood, Muggle, and Muggle-born helps them out when they spot a confused Pureblood in the aisle at Maxis.

What's more, you are now also seeking to pass an amendment that will not allow
persons to take the train unless they can act as a Pureblood would,
especially if they are to live in a Pureblood majority province.

With all do respect, Minister, but that is a load of horse shit (Pardon my English).

What good exactly is supposed to come from this? What good can come from
isolating the Muggle-born population of Quebec, who have lived and worked here for as long as your Pureblood ancestors have? What of the
immigrants coming over to Quebec who are neither Pureblood or Muggle-born? By
all means, they should get the opportunity to learn about Pureblood culture, but why
limit their opportunity to learn about the Muggle-born as well? It's not like the rest of the country aren't predominantly Muggle-born (but that's why you tried to have the country's flag removed from the National assembly last year, right?). It's not like Quebec doesn't sit on the border of America, a predominantly Muggle country, or anything. Purebloods in Europe live next to tons of different bloods, Muggles, and cultures of which they aren't fluent and they survive.

Look, Minister. I'm not saying that Muggle-borns are more important or better than Purebloods. Trust me, I am so proud have Pureblood heritage and I
think Pureblood history and culture should absolutely be appreciated. I
know my own family faced situations of discrimination in the past for
being Pureblood and that's incredibly unfair. But that doesn't
make any of this right. You can't force your ways onto others because you want to "preserve" it (even though you all seem to be getting along just fine for the past 400 years). You can't
encourage the Purebloods to
become community vigilantes against Muggle-borns. What's the big
deal with both being taught and used peacefully together? Isolating Muggle-borns (regardless of your official Pureblood majority population in the province) isn't only isolating the Muggle-born Quebecker, who have been in
Quebec probably as long as you have, but also everybody else to the
south, north, east, and west of you. The world does not revolve around
Quebec and its Purebloods.

No one is out to destroy you. If they were to destroy you, over 80% of the
province's population probably wouldn't still be Pureblood, would they now? That doesn't look so endangered to me. We've been living
together for CENTURIES. Purebloods have been mixing with Muggle-borns and Muggles and making bilingual Half-Blood babies for years. Why act so offended when a Muggle-born speaks to you like a Muggle? Why try to prohibit them from doing so? Why can't we just treat each other with respect and dignity, understanding that we are all living here together, witches, wizards, Purebloods, Muggle-borns alike? If it's so important to you, let's just have everyone walk around with hats on that say "Pureblood", "Muggleborn", "Neither", or "Eff it, I'm both." It would probably make things much easier for you and save loads of trouble.

On that note, Minister, what about me? I descend from a Pureblood family, I was born in Quebec, but my skill in your ways is next to none. Not to mention my Pureblood wizard grandfather Lefebvre married a Muggle-born and made my Half-Blood father, who then married my full-blown Muggle mother. If I went into the train station tomorrow, I could barely ask for the restroom. Chances are I would be denied a ticket, yeah?

What about the hoards of Muggle tourists who come to Quebec for an awesome
time? What if an Muggle tourist walks into the metro and doesn't know how to
order a ticket in Pureblood? You're honestly going to make them walk? Is
it so wrong of a Muggle to come to Montreal under the assumption
they'll be all right considering it's internationally known as a dual-blood city? Okay, so maybe Muggle tourists don't count. Maybe the tourist can just say he's a Muggle and doesn't know anything about Purebloods and maybe that's okay,
so he gets a pass (he's a tourist after all). But, what if there's an Muggle-born Quebecker behind him who lives in Montreal, but grew up
in Muggle-y Calgary, standing in line behind this Muggle tourist? He struggles
to speak Pureblood and is then told to walk. That sounds preeeetty unfair to me.

In other words, Minister, you can't pick and choose. You can't expect the over 800, 000 Muggleborn and Muggle-raised people living in your cities and towns to respect your Pureblood ways if you don't seem to respect their's. We've been doing all right for a looooong time now, so let's put away all this pettiness and get back to the really, really important stuff that makes the good, abiding tax payer's money to productive use. If a Pureblood wishes to be addressed as a Pureblood, then of course he or she can! If a Pureblood is speaking to a Muggleborn and they're lost in translation, that can easily be resolved. I say let's all make an effort to understand each other. Purebloods learn the Muggle ways and Muggleborns learn the Pureblood ways. No need to take everything so personally. Purebloods are lovely hard-working people, just like the Muggleborns. Why can't we all be friends and stop trying to regulate each other based purely on ethnic majority? I'm going out on a limb here, but....I'm pretty darn sure world (not just wizarding) history shows the consequences of that. Like, a lot. All the time.

Thank you for your time!

Sincerely,

Caroline Lefebvre, a Half-Blood. Who wouldn't give a damn if someone spoke to me in any language as long as we both made an equal effort to help each other out.